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A hardman act to follow

Just like Nidge, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor has become the top man in RTE’s gangland drama Love/Hate

Eithne Shortall

November 1 2012, 4:35pm, The Sunday Times

Before interviewing Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, I watched a preview ­episode of the latest season of RTE’s Love/Hate. Nidge, his character, has asserted himself as leader of the ­fictionalised Dublin gang and is ­colluding with the IRA, discarding corpses and hiring prostitutes. The menace­ has unnerving credibility.

The following afternoon in a London theatre cafe, the same person is nibbling delicately on what appears to be a flapjack while talking about Stanislavski acting methods and the classics degree he got from Trinity College. “I can barely tell you when the Peloponnesian War was,” he guffaws in an Anglo-Irish accent, ­gesticulating theatrically before hugging the sleeves of his dark knit jumper.

Here is the proof of Vaughan-Lawlor’s talent. Not just an unlikely actor to play the intimidating criminal,…

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